DeGraeve.com

Witty Profiles Optimization

2010-04-30T17:53:00.001-04:00

Last week I released a complete rewrite of WittyProfiles.com. The goal of the rewrite was to reduce the database load and cache as many queries as possible. After about a week of monitoring, database load is way down and an average of 92% of MySQL queries are in memcached. The best part is that the users are happy with the increased performance. I guess it was worth taking the 6 months to transform 7 years of clunky PHP functions into modern object oriented code.

Giftputer - Find the Perfect Gift

2009-12-04T11:08:00.002-05:00

Back in August 2009 I created Giftputer.com. Giftputer uses crowdsourcing to find the perfect gifts given age, sex and personality. This project uses Amazon.com RSS Feeds, the python Universal Feed Parser, PHP and MySQL. Giftputer was designed to be a useful tool during the holiday shopping season and to bring in a few bucks in Amazon referrals.

DeGraeve.com is 10 Years Old Today

2009-07-07T11:47:00.004-04:00

Here's hoping for another 10 years of stuff from DeGraeve.com.

Geek Chart

2009-04-29T23:09:00.005-04:00

A Geek Chart is a web badge that shows where you share stuff online. Each slice of the Geek Chart is a link to your profile on sites like Flickr, Twitter, Youtube and more. What does your Geek Chart look like?

This is a project I did to learn Python, brush up on ActionScript 3, experiment with ATOM and RSS feeds and play with memcached. The user and chart data is stored in MySQL tables. PHP is used for the front end. Surprisingly, there is no JavaScript in this project (yet). The idea was to use as many skills as possible to build something semi-useful that would impress future employers.

Yum Gifts

2009-04-01T17:30:00.004-04:00

YumGifts.com is a site that I built while experimenting with the Python Universal Feed Parser and Amazon.com feeds. It displays the top selling gourmet food items. The site updates hourly.

Business Card Robot

2009-02-01T03:18:00.004-05:00

Lose your job and need business cards? Let the Business Card Robot make business cards for you.

Free PDF Cards

2009-01-27T20:31:00.006-05:00

Easily create business cards with FreePDFCards.com. Enter your contact information and get a PDF of your business cards you can print on your home printer or at an office print supply store like Kinko's.

Cube Status

2009-01-16T01:28:00.005-05:00

CubeStatus.com is meaningless project that spits out recent Twitter Tweets (cringe) mentioning cubicles. What is special about CubeStatus.com is that the entire idea and development process lasted only 4 hours. I thought of the domain name, discovered (to my surprise) that it was available, purchased it, updated the name servers, set up hosting, learned the Twitter API and threw together a little page with jQuery. I'm bored.

WittyProfiles.com Redesign

2008-11-02T22:28:00.007-05:00

Earlier this year, I rewrote the inner workings of WittyProfiles.com, a website I created way back in 2003. I optimized a lot of the backend code and added a number of new social network features. The new features led to more usage, and more confusion. After listening to a lot of user feedback and questions, I redesigned the site to make it easier to use. In the end, Witty Profile's bounce rate went from 45.0% to 24.9%, pages per visit went from 6.7 to 10.6, average time on site went from 7m:42s to 12m:25s and daily page views went from 30,000 to 100,000.

Print Your Own Business Cards

2008-07-30T22:03:00.003-04:00

AtomicBusinessCards.com lets you create and print your own business cards for free. Simply enter your contact information, upload a logo, and get a printable PDF of your custom business cards.

WittyProfiles.com Evolves

2008-06-30T23:29:00.005-04:00

I spent the last couple of months rewriting WittyProfiles.com from scratch. Witty Profiles is a site I started in 2003 that now contains a library of nearly 250,000 short text messages for people to copy and paste into their profiles on social networks. Over the years I've collected a lot of user feedback and decided now was the time to implement the most requested features. Included in this release: rich text editing of quotes and profiles, elimination of quote moderation, quote voting, enhanced user profiles, and improved search.

Flickr RSS Feed Generator

2008-02-19T21:44:00.000-05:00

Mac OS X has a screen saver that takes an RSS feed of images as a data source. This Flickr RSS Feed Generator uses the Flickr API to retrieve images determined by parameters you specify and returns an RSS feed, whose URL you can paste into the screensaver options screen in OS X.

New Buddy Icon Maker at FranksIcons.com

2008-01-05T21:50:00.000-05:00

Frank's Icons released an updated buddy icon and avatar maker. New features include: icons with up to 6 frames of animation using up to 6 different images with better fonts, font sizes and font colors. Make a new buddy icon now!

ColorHunter.com Now Accepts Image Uploads

2007-10-06T17:38:00.000-04:00

Are you a designer struggling to find just the right color scheme? Struggle no more. ColorHunter.com now lets you get color palettes from uploaded images. Simply upload your design in progress (in jpg, gif or png format) and get two color schemes generated from the image. Try it out!

Favicon Editor is Better Than Ever

2007-08-18T02:13:00.000-04:00

The DeGraeve.com Favicon Editor has been redesigned for better usability. You can now drag your cursor around to paint your favicon instead of designing it by clicking one pixel at a time. You can now create favicons from uploaded images of any size and type. The favicon editor has more colors to choose from and now keeps track of what colors you've used. Try it out!

Color Hunter

2007-06-04T20:27:00.000-04:00

ColorHunter.com is for people who want to find color palettes created from images. The color palettes are created on the fly from flickr images that match your search terms. Check out the latest nature color palettes.

Facts

2007-03-31T00:31:00.000-04:00

Looking for something to talk about during an awkward moment? Read up on the latest interesting information and trivia in DeGraeve.com's new Facts section.

DeGraeve.com Powers Facebook

2007-02-28T23:30:00.000-05:00

Well, sort of. I noticed a huge surge in requests recently for my color palette generator web service and did some investigating which eventually led to Justin Ormont's Facebook Auto-Colorizer which automatically colorizes Facebook profiles based on the user's photo. Pretty cool usage.

256pixels.com Improvements

2007-01-05T21:53:00.000-05:00

256pixels.com is web site that holds a daily favicon design challenge. Instead of creating a favicon from scratch every time, you can now upload an image to get you started on your favicon design.

Color Palette Generator Web Service

2006-12-10T23:20:00.000-05:00

My color palette generator has made its way around the internet and based on feedback, I've developed a web service that returns an XML document containing a color palette given the URL of an image. This means you can now automate your color palette generation. Get XML responses to requests sent in the form of: http://www.degraeve.org/cgi-bin/color-palette.cgi?url=urltoimg

OmniWishList.com - Share Your Holiday Wish List

2006-11-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

Every year my family asks me what I want for Christmas. Every year I put together a little page on my website with my wish list and send them an email with a link to the list. This year I decided to make a website where anyone can easily make a wish list and send it to their friends and family. OmniWishList.com lets you make a wish list and send it out but with an added bonus: your friends and family can cross stuff off your list so you don't get duplicate gifts.

WittyProfiles.com Podcast

2006-11-14T11:18:00.000-05:00

I've created a weekly podcast using quotes from WittyProfiles.com. I used text-to-speech software to create audio files of the quotes and then stitched the files together with Audacity. My goal is to automate the podcast creation process. Does anyone out there know of a free UNIX command line utility or web-based text-to-speech service to produce audio files?

256pixels.com, a daily favicon design challenge

2006-10-31T09:40:00.000-05:00

256pixels.com is a new website that hosts a daily design challenge to create the best favicon for a given topic. Users create favicons with an easy to use web interface. Peer voting determines the best favicon in a given challenge. Do you have what it takes to win today's favicon design challenge?

WittyProfiles.com Gets a Makeover

2006-09-19T14:55:00.000-04:00

I recently updated the look of WittyProfiles.com.

Frank's Buddy Icons Google Module

2006-07-24T18:48:00.000-04:00

See the newest buddy icons made on franksicons.com with my new Google module. Click on an icon to make your own using the same template.